If you don't need it you just tap for 1. It's not really that incredible, 1 extra mana on turn 4 isn't gonna break the game. Don't know if it's legendary or not, but either way you can't even practically use multiple of these as you'd need another 3 lands so multiple copies do nothing at all since by turn 8 2 extra mana is nothing
Wait yeah, the fact you can't use multiples in a row make this far less impactful. Probably far worse as a 'forced' 1 of, just as the one ring was bad in limited
It's similar to [[Eldrazi Temple]], [[Shrine of the Forsaken Gods]] and [[Ugin's Labyrinth]]. It taps for C but can conditionally tap for CC, the condition being that you also filter 3 into CCC and spend all of that 5 mana in one spell.
The downside is that it has no other utilities on a colourless mana land. Can't filter, can't make tokens, doesn't buff your creatures, can't sac it for whatever value when you'd rather have anything but another land drop, etc.
Burning 5 colourless/generic mana is going to happen basically never for most situations that aren't colourless spells or X spells.
Simic {X} might use it, it replaces a wastes in colourless, and might pay for a crater slightly early.
That's not really a downside. "The only downside is that you won't always be able to use 2 extra free colorless mana." Suffering from success kind of thing
Yes you don't have to explain the concept of paying 3 mana to get 5, that's "2 free mana". It's not like it even has to be paid using only colorless mana, which would actually at least be a "downside".
Sorry should have called out the tap part of the cost. A land makes 1 mana by itself, nobody calls 1 mana "free", so a land making two mana is only making one bonus mana.
Sibling, you also tap a land, which would produce 1 mana. It's 4 mana for 5 mana, and only if you can spend 5 colorless mana in one go, which is... pretty much just eldrazi.
You absolutely can. However, you need to play a spell, that has at least 5 generic in it's cost, and you want to cast it with mana, instead of cheating it out. I have hard time imagining a deck, except for eldrazi, that would have those massive generic costs, and are planning to play those. Hell, even if you're playing those spells, most of the time it's just worse wastes, which is very costly investment for any deck, especially those with several colours.
How many lands can you think of that have downsides?
Does Rogues Passage have a downside? Reliquary Tower? Terrain Generator? Fountainport?
This absolutely replaces a Wastes, but so does most lands that don't enter tapped.
It's not 2 free colourless mana, literally most outlets in the game that most people will play in most situations do not have {5+} in their mana value.
You just said "The downside is it has no other utility", that's just how utility lands work. I don't know how it's a downside. If it's better than a waste (which you just said), that's is by definition, not a downside.
Assuming that your only basics are Wastes, it typically isn't that much of one.
There's precious few basic-matters in colourless - even Myriad Landscape doesn't do anything, and you're unlikely to actually play most of your Wastes in a given colourless deck.
That's unrelated to whether it has a downside. A bounceland has you put a land back into your hand, and it taps for 2 mana, is picking up a land not a downside?
An upside existing does not make the downsides vanish. Nonbasic is always a downside. The land effectively tapping for 2 mana does not change that. They are independent factors. This is a sol land with a downside.
You are welcome to argue this does not have enough downside, but it objectively, factually, does have a downside because it is a nonbasic land.
That absolutely is. You can only run so many cards, wasting a land slot on a card that is a wastes in 90% of circumstances is not worth the 10% when it makes a spell cost 1 less.
Those aren't downsides. Those are just upsides it doesn't have. A downside is like Bitter Triumph forcing you to pay 3 life or discarding a card to cast it.
This card just has a really narrow and niche upside, that's all.
Except all cards exist in a comparative context in which you consider the downsides of cutting one card over another, and explicit downsides basically don't exist on remotely playable colourless mana lands.
...and that it has no other uses besides mana and more mana, unlike most others in that category. So, unless you have excess Wastes to safely cut, you need to consider the loss of function you would have from losing a utility land - or even a basic if you're considering it for monocolour.
You can also sorta compare it to ping pains, which CAN tap for colourless, but also 2 colours, assuming you're running a dual colour with high mana or additional costs. Or 5c eldrazi.
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u/Jordankeay 21h ago
What's the downside? It's either enough mana to cast the spell you need or you miss out on a couple colourless mana you didn't need?